Continuing my Mercury Prize-a-thon, I've been listening to The Invisible by The Invisible. Not a band I'd come across, although I discovered I'd already bought this album from eMusic but never got round to listening to it. Flagrant consumerism? Oh yes!
Having forced myself to give it a fair airing, is this to be a purchase I regret? And could I sound more like Carrie Bradshaw?
The album opens with In Retrograde which presents a few bars of what I can't describe as anything but bossa-madrigal: believe me, I have tried and failed to get that horrendous self-inflicted appellation out of my mind. It's actually rather nicer than I've painted it — all Gilberto Gil-sounding before descending into a jazzy stew. Overall the album has a cool, introspective feeling underpinned by a deep hypnotic groove. Good for the gym, which is where I first ended up listening to it.
My particular stand out tracks are London Girl and Monster's Waltz — which I forgive for not being in 3/4 time only because it's so huge. I have to admit, I found myself skipping the final few tracks at the first listen — it felt like an album of two parts with the out-and-out groovers up front and a number of more downbeat numbers tacked on the end. This proved to be a bit harsh when I went revisited them as the two or three skipped songs are rather lovely while Time Waits provides a satisfyingly thrashy coda.
My snap judgement of The Invisible from the short clips on the Mercury award show was that they sounded rather like TV On The Radio. Having listened, there are definite musical parallels: both trade in the same kind of indie funk, although for my money The Invisible have a brooding edge and a bit less polish. Other artists brought to mind include The Lemonheads and U2, strangely both on the track Baby Doll. The latter would normally put me off — U2 having adequately become their own overblown tribute act to require another — but the sprinkling of influence works really well in context.
It's available on Spotify, or you can hear more at myspace. They've also got what looks to be a fairly active blog, which today (8th October) contains the drummer from Micachu and The Shapes modelling his new coat.
PS Oh, in case it's not apparent, I don't regret my unwitting purchase of this album.
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